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Bitcoin Surges Past $400

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Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#221

Post by dmix »

gluelogic wrote: post #146
mikeyouse wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of videos popping up on YouTube with how much money these people have 'made' on MMM Global, it's sad to see; https://www.youtube.com/results?lclk=week&search_query=mmm+g... It's very likely a big part of the price increase, many of the local MMM sites advertise that they're bitcoin-only and all of the exchanges are extraordinarily shallow so small surges in demand really move prices. Here's a pret…

These these videos feel like they're following a script. Even the titles of all the videos are the same. "MMM Global Pays !"

They probably are scripted, MMM was famous among Russians for creating ads featuring 'commoner' actors in the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonya_Golubkov

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#222

Post by gwern »

dperfect wrote: post #160
gwern wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand his point. The MMM ponzi schemers presumably don't want to hold bitcoins forever, and would be selling them for local currencies; if each bitcoin bought by a MMM victim is being immediately sold by a MMM con artist, then the net effect is zero and the effect on the price is much less than however much is being laundered and the price is boosted only by the float (however much bitcoins are being held…

I understand that, but it still doesn't make the trend any less "real" than trends seen from other drivers of price movement. To explain a bit more: If a merchant receives fraudulent credit card transactions, he/she could reasonably refer to those as "not real" because once the banks discover the fraud, they have the power to move money and effectively nullify those transactions in many cases. In contrast, on the blo…

> and a price "boosted only by the float" is no different from a price boosted by anything else

But the float is much smaller than the total volume of the fraud. If MMM is doing $10b of fraud a year, then it's not boosting Bitcoin's marketcap by $10b as one might naively guess ('$10b fraud drives Bitcoin price growth!' scream the headlines), it's boosting the price by much much less, by just the float (which could be more like $27m).

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#223

Post by maaku »

csomar wrote: post #210
jsprogrammer wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need >50% of the miners to do that. It is precisely what I mean by building a protocol. Of course, without strong consensus (and a real algorithm/protocol) such attempts will likely just result in fractured blockchains (basically the state at the moment, with many competing implementations of the same basic idea).

Not really. you are talking about an attack. You'll need 100%, because if a single miner decided to include the transaction, then it is in!

You need only a cabal of >50% of the miners to agree to not build on any block that includes such a transaction.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#224

Post by oberstein »

jarboot wrote: post #162

The little pile of bitcoins I had laying around from a couple weeks ago has doubled in price. Should I spend them now in anticipation of a bubble bursting or wait for the price to possibly go up?

Depends what you expected those initial coins to do. Did you get them as a speculative investment with a chance of "interest" of x%/year? Then a 100% increase is pretty damn good as far as investments go, you shouldn't feel too bad about selling now. You'll have regret if it continues to grow to the moon, so maybe sell half or 3/4. But also calculate the potential unrealized earnings if it went to the moon -- i.e. if your little pile was only worth $100, now $200, even if it doubles twice more the difference is just $600.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#225

Post by btilly »

elif wrote: post #180
theseatoms wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, I don't think that's how markets work. I know that people tend to psychologically anchor to round figures, but I don't see this situation playing out as you've described.

There are very real 'sell walls' on most of the markets, hovering around rounded increments. Once those "barriers" get broken through, there is usually a spike in price afterward. I could totally see a spike on one market driving buys in another market, so it is a reasonable point to consider the effect cascading.

Citation, please. With evidence that it actually works with real markets.

This sounds a lot like the kinds of claims that are routinely made in technical analysis for stocks. To the best of my knowledge, new claims can always be generated because humans are very good at imagining patterns in random data, but attempts afterwards to verify those theories uniformly fail. However stock brokers have found that it is very good for business to have customers who believe in technical analysis, because it is always easy to convince those customers to trade. Therefore lots of people get exposed to all sorts of technical analysis theories about "psychological support levels" and so on. But it doesn't actually work in reality.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#226

Post by dperfect »

gwern wrote: post #222
dperfect wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, but it still doesn't make the trend any less "real" than trends seen from other drivers of price movement. To explain a bit more: If a merchant receives fraudulent credit card transactions, he/she could reasonably refer to those as "not real" because once the banks discover the fraud, they have the power to move money and effectively nullify those transactions in many cases. In contrast, on the blo…

> and a price "boosted only by the float" is no different from a price boosted by anything else But the float is much smaller than the total volume of the fraud. If MMM is doing $10b of fraud a year, then it's not boosting Bitcoin's marketcap by $10b as one might naively guess ('$10b fraud drives Bitcoin price growth!' scream the headlines), it's boosting the price by much much less, by just the float (which could be…

I don't think anyone claimed that there was 1:1 relationship between the volume of this (or any other) fraud and a change in bitcoin's market cap. As far as bitcoin is concerned, the particular details of the fraud are entirely irrelevant.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#227

Post by jsprogrammer »

csomar wrote: post #210
jsprogrammer wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need >50% of the miners to do that. It is precisely what I mean by building a protocol. Of course, without strong consensus (and a real algorithm/protocol) such attempts will likely just result in fractured blockchains (basically the state at the moment, with many competing implementations of the same basic idea).

Not really. you are talking about an attack. You'll need 100%, because if a single miner decided to include the transaction, then it is in!

An attack and a new protocol are the same thing.

If a single miner includes the transaction, a majority can just bypass that sole miner.

You do need 100% of something, but that something is just >50% of the miners.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#228

Post by xixi77 »

fixermark wrote: post #213
aianus wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can store $100m in bitcoin on a piece of paper in a vault. It reduces perfectly to the solved problem of securing $100m in $100 bills in a vault (which, yes, you can insure).

While true, that does not offer the same protection as an FDIC-style insurance program (and restricts the storing entity's ability to compete and perform by preventing them from investing that $100m, so the market will tend ceteris parabus to punish companies that take such a step in good times with relatively-slower growth, acting as a disincentivizing counter-weight to offering insurance). In contrast, the FDIC has…

Since this is about an amount of $100m, I'd say the above suggestion (theoretically) offers much more protection than FDIC, which only covers losses up to $250k iirc...

I suspect that at the moment it may be more difficult to find an insurer for a vault with that piece of paper, compared to a vault with $100m cash though :) but perhaps that'll change.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#229

Post by jcslzr »

josu wrote: post #143
csomar wrote: post #35

There is nothing that can guarantee that this ride is real, but here are a few things: 1. However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now. Remember that if you are transacting in bitcoin, there is one party buying and the other one selling. So you are not rising the price to the moon. 2. The number of transactions has been growing again as of late. It's heating at the blockch…

On top of that, remember that bitcoin has many prices, the most important ones being US dollar, Euro and Chinese Yuan. Right now bitcoin is around 500USD, but it's sitting on 450EUR. People buying in euros will be confident that the price will go up to 500EUR and they'll keep pushing up the price. Wich will push CNY price to 3450CNY, a very ugly price, so it will probably move to 3500CNY.

so can you buy in Dollars and sell in Euros at a profit?

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#230

Post by xacaxulu »

blantonl wrote: post #190
xacaxulu wrote: post #189

I slowly bought about 25 BTC since January. Honestly this is very exciting right now and I've basically been daytrading for the last few days. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it's been enjoyable to set alerts for different price points then buy/sell as necessary. I like the liquidity and 0 government involvement/taxation - something I couldn't do with stock/options/CDs etc.

If you convert BTC to $$ or your local currency, expect a tax situation.

Local transactions from anonymous accounts. I'm not going to file anything.
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